Cranbrook ACADEMY OF ART
2009 - 2016 Bloomfield Hills
I was first hired at Cranbrook to oversee the areas of Academic Programs, Recruitment, Admissions, and Financial Aid. Over time, I was promoted to Dean at the Academy, which broadened my role to include leadership with the Artists-in-Residence (faculty), partnership with Development + Fundraising, as well as the Cranbrook Educational Community and greater Detroit. As key - and favorite - parts of the work, I re-designed the Public Lecture Series at the Academy, creating a variety-show of dynamic designers, artists, thinkers, mavericks - often in partnership with other schools and organizations. As Dean, I also created the Critical Studies Teaching Fellowship in 2009. This fellowship sat at the center of the Academy’s academic program and brought a wide range of international guests to be in residence at Cranbrook. Designed to put visiting scholars, thinkers, writers, critics in direct dialog with students - and to give them time to pursue their own work – Critical Studies Fellows were selected for their perspectives on theory and culture studies. Fellows were chosen to reflect the most current intellectual discourses within the fields of architecture, art and design.
The following Fellows were a part of the program. All professional titled noted are from the time of their Fellowship. Many have since moved to other positions.
2016 Fall
Alpesh Kantilal Patel
Assistant Professor in Contemporary Art and Theory at Florida International University
“Artistic Practice as Theory and as Entangled with the World”
2017 Spring
Kristi McGuire
Adjunct Assistant Professor, School of the Art Institute of Chicago; Web and New Media Editor, University of Chicago Press.
“The Poetics of Political Economy, or A Critical Theory of Everything (A Magic Trick that Turns Speech into Capital)”
2015 Fall / 2016 Spring
Laura McGough
Media arts curator, practitioner and educator, University of Buffalo
“Participatory Media and the Political Aesthetics of Feedback”
2015 Spring
Jaimey Hamilton Faris
Associate Professor of Critical Theory and Contemporary Art at the University of Hawaii Mānoa
“Of Islands and the In-Between”
2014 Fall
Joseph Tanke
Associate Professor and Chair of the Graduate Program in Philosophy at the University of Hawaii, Manoa
“The Audacious Idea of the Aesthetic: Entropy in Two Parts”
2014 Spring
Francis Halsall
Lecturer in the History/Theory of Modern & Contemporary Art at National College of Art and Design, Dublin
“Systems and Objects: Perspectives from Theory and Practice”
2013 Fall
Anthony Byrt
Art writer and Director of Research at Auckland’s Whitecliffe College of Arts & Design
“Harlequin’s Return: Art, Masquerade and Terror in a Post-Nuclear World”
2012
Shannon Stratton
Founder and Executive and Creative Director of threewalls, Chicago
“The Social Capital of the Amateur”
2011
Jana Cephas
PhD candidate in History and Theory of Architecture, Landscape and Urbanism at Harvard University
“Bodies of Knowledge: Corporeal Landscapes and Aesthetic Practices”
2010
Christopher Ho
Critic, curator, and artist
“Critical Curating and Contemporary Modes of Collaboration”
2009
Lane Relyea
Associate Professor of Art Theory and Practice at Northwestern University
“D.I.Y Culture: Signifying Practices, Social Networks and Other Instrumentalizations of Everyday Art”
Other visitors to the program included Nicole Archer, Kate Bonansinga, Rashayla Marie Brown, Sande Cohen, John Corso, Luis Croquer, Kenneth Goldsmith, Judith-Jack Halberstam, Anthony Huberman, Catherine Lord, Mimi Nguyen, Amitis Motevalli, Minh Ha Pham, Sarah Margolis Pineo, Vanessa Place, Peter Schjeldahl, Sue Taylor, Etienne Turpin, Julia Bryan Wilson, among others. It was a dynamic and exiting line-up every season.